Antonio Tajani, president of the European Parliament, has said the scale and severity of the migrant crisis is being underestimated

The number of migrants crossing into Europe from Africa will be in the millions within five years unless urgent action is taken, a senior EU official has warned.

Antonio Tajani, president of the European Parliament, has said the scale and severity of the migrant crisis is being underestimated and must be tackled urgently.

In an interview with Il Messagero newspaper, Mr Tajani said there would be an exodus ‘of biblical proportions that would be impossible to stop if we don’t confront the problem now’.

‘Population growth, climate change, desertification, wars, famine in Somalia and Sudan. These are the factors that are forcing people to leave.

‘When people lose hope, they risk crossing the Sahara and the Mediterranean because it is worse to stay at home, where they run enormous risks. If we don’t confront this soon, we will find ourselves with millions of people on our doorstep within five years.

‘Today we are trying to solve a problem of a few thousand people, but we need to have a strategy for millions of people.’

Former Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi, the head of the ruling Democratic Party, said yesterday Italy should allow only a ‘fixed number’ of migrants into the country as it grapples with a wave of people arriving by sea from North Africa.

Mr Tajani's warning comes after a Paris shanty town containing some 2,500 migrants was pulled to the ground on Friday and its inhabitants 'evacuated' to other parts of France

Many were from war-torn countries such as Afghanistan and Eritrea who said they were desperate to get to Britain as quickly as possible

The mass operation, which involved riot police, unfolded soon after dawn as the mainly young men were forced out of the illegal settlement in the Porte de la Chapelle

‘There has to be a fixed number of arrivals. We should not feel guilty if we are not able to welcome everyone,’ Mr Renzi said in a video posted on his party’s website.

‘We have to save everyone, but we are not able to welcome everyone into Italy,’ he said.

Italy has been struggling to cope with a large number of migrants, mostly sub-Saharan Africans, crossing the Mediterranean Sea from Libya, a journey that has so far claimed more than 2,200 lives this year, UN figures show.